Document Ownership and Editing Rights

Your role on the project team and whether you own a deliverable or activity determines if you can upload and publish document versions, and whether you have rights to modify details such as the status, document dates, and the document owner.

Document Ownership

Ownership of a gate document, deliverable, or activity determines whether you can upload and publish new document versions. Ownership can be either explicit (an owner is specifically assigned) or implicit (ownership is inherited when an explicit owner is not assigned).

You have explicit ownership of a document under the following circumstances:

• You are assigned as the document owner - On a project team, you are assigned automatically to deliverables and activities that have been associated in the model or on the project team with your job function on the team. For example, as a Chemist or a member of Quality Assurance. The first team member on a team that is assigned to the function associated with the document becomes the owner of any document with that function.

A Process Manager with Manage Process rights or the assigned project manager can also assign you as the owner of a single deliverable or activity within the project, giving you explicit rights.

These ownership rules are also true for gate owners, and any associated gate documents.

• The document owner assigns you to an activity on their deliverable - Document owners can assign themselves, the project manager, or other team members as the owner of an activity on a deliverable that they own.
• You assign yourself as document owner - If shared ownership (collaborative deliverables) is enabled, you can assign yourself as the owner of a currently unowned deliverable or activity that has been flagged to allow shared ownership.

Select your own name next to a deliverable or activity that has been marked as collaborative and that currently displays [Available] in the Owner field.

If a gate, deliverable, or activity does not have an explicit, assigned owner, it always has an implicit owner to ensure there is always an owner assigned, and so the project manager does not have to assign themselves as an owner to change an unowned document. Implicit ownership applies when a user is not specifically assigned as the owner and is determined as follows:

• If an activity has no owner, the owner assigned the deliverable owns the activity.
• If a deliverable has no assigned owner, the project manager owns the deliverable and can add new versions of the deliverable to the project.
• If a gate has no assigned owner, the project manager owns the deliverable and can add new versions of gate documents within the gate and can set gate meetings.
• If a project has no assigned project manager, a Process Manager (or Idea Manager for Idea projects) with Manage Process rights within the project's access group, has project manager rights to the project. Therefore, the Process Manager owns unassigned gates, deliverables, and activities. As soon as a project has an assigned project manager, the Process Manager no longer has implicit rights.

Workflow action owners have the following ownership rights in documents that contain the workflow:

• An action owner with Can Edit permissions in the workflow can upload, link to, and edit deliverable versions associated with their workflow action.
• An action owner with Can Publish permissions in the workflow can publish deliverable versions associated with their workflow action.

Document Editing Rights

Your user role and assignments within a project determine your ability to edit certain deliverable, activity, and related document details. Assigned document owners, assigned project managers, and Process Managers (with Manage Process rights) have the ability to edit document details with or without ownership to the document. Other team members, such as workflow action owners, can also have limited edit rights, such as updating status notes and dates when a workflow is in progress and currently in the step in which they are taking action. However, team members with no association to a deliverable or activity do not have the ability to edit details, unless the deliverable is set for collaboration.

For example, the assigned document owner, assigned project managers, and Process Managers (with Manage Process rights) can update the status, status notes, dates, function, and owner of deliverable or activity. If an owner is assigned to a document, the project manager and Process Managers can no longer upload versions of the document because they have lost their implicit ownership rights. However, they can still update details such as dates.

Notes:    The Allow Team Members to Share Assignments system parameter enables and disables collaborative deliverables. The Allow Document Owners to Set Start Date, Allow Document Owners to Set Deadline, and Allow Document Owners to Set Function system parameters also determine whether assigned Document Owners can update those respective details in the documents that they own. Users identified in other Help topics as the document owner include owners regardless of how they acquire ownership rights.